Car Seat Craziness

After many months of mind-changes, I finally decided on a car seat: the Graco Infant SafeSeat (Step 1).  It’s a rear-facing infant-carrier style car seat that allows for a weight limit of up to 30 lbs. After that, baby should be ready to ride forward facing, and I’m thinking I can get the Graco Nautilus 3-in-1 to hopefully last from that point onward.  If it actually works out that I’ll only need two car seats to last the length of my child’s “safety seat” requirements that would be wonderful.

I found the SafeSeat suspiciously easy to install using the LATCH system.  I think I was just expecting it to be harder after reading so much about car seats –  though since 80% of people supposedly install their car seat wrong, it’s possible I don’t have it in right (unfortunately Morgantown does not seem to have a Child Safety Inspection Station).  I did read both my Jeep’s manual and the manual that came with the car seat before even attempting it, and it seems to be installed right (very solid against the seat, and doesn’t move along the belt path, survives yanking and twisting motions without loosening).  Since I used the LATCH system it was basically just click it on (which was only a little stiff to do) and tighten the straps.  As you can see, in the middle of the back seat I don’t even seem to need to move the seats up any–and yes, the manual says the handle of the carrier can be locked in the “up” position safely:

(Graco Infant SafeSeat, pattern “Quinn”, in a 2006 Jeep Liberty — the level shows an acceptable tilt and the seat seems to be solid.  I pushed the canopy back so it wouldn’t obscure the seat for this picture, but it’s cuter looking forward.)

It seems like the Jeep is more made to have car seats on either side than in the middle since it only has four LATCH anchors in the back (even though the manual does say you can use the LATCH anchors in each of the three seating positions, just not to secure two seats side by side with the same anchor), and I’m using a LATCH anchor from each side to have the seat in the middle.  I may move the seat to one side or the other instead to experiment, though it would probably mean we need to move a front seat up.  The middle is supposed to be the safest place for the seat, so I may just leave it there (hey the seat is in, maybe I shouldn’t mess with it too much right now).  It’s nice too that, being an infant-carrier, the seat will click out of the base, so we can take it into the hospital and secure her in it inside to take her out to the car.

Even though the car seat installation wasn’t too hard, I hadn’t realized until I was pregnant what a pain it had become to travel with children.  Safety seats are necessary until the child is about 8 years old (or 4’9″).  WV law (17C-15-46) specifically requires seating that complies with federal motor vehicle safety standards until that time, even if it weren’t already in the best interest for the child’s safety.  (Long gone are the days of climbing into the back of the station wagon to play games on trips, or lounging across the back seat to nap or read.)  And because of airbags, children aren’t usually good for the front seat at all until age 12 or later.

If you don’t particularly care about general car seat information, or how I came to choose this seat over others, the rest of this entry may not be of interest to you, just to give you fair warning.

A baby must be in a rear-facing seat until at least 1 year old and 20 lbs.  If a child exceeds 20 lbs before the 1 year mark she must still be rear-facing until at least the 1 year mark — a baby’s bones aren’t well-formed enough to stand up to a forward facing accident before that time.  Ideally, a child should be rear-facing for longer than age 1, but 1 year is the minimum.

To have the child rear-facing there are basically two sorts of seats you can consider, an infant-carrier style rear-facing seat (which is what we got) or what’s known as a convertible seat (one that can be used either rear-facing or forward-facing).

At first, I was going to skip the infant seat and go for the convertible.  It seemed to make the most sense, since infant seats are usually only good up to 22 lbs, and roughly 50% of kids are going to weigh that before age 1 (at least as far as I can tell from the CDC growth charts).  Many convertible seats allow for rear-facing up to 35 lbs, which should be well past the first year, and maybe even into the second (provided height allows, which is the other catch to all this).  And then they can be turned around and used forward facing to at least 40 lbs (and some seats for longer).

When the child outgrows the infant seat, you’ll probably have to go with the convertible anyway to finish out the year rear-facing, so why not start with it?

Thing is, convertibles aren’t really made for infants.  They work out fine for some people (and really, how much traveling are you planning on doing with your infant?), but they often aren’t as comfortable for a newborn/infant and don’t recline as well (or sometimes as far) as would be ideal for an infant who can’t hold his head up — or if they do, they become harder to fit in the vehicle.  And if they are made to be comfortable for a newborn, then they aren’t going to be as comfortable for an older and larger child.  Many of the seats with infant inserts seemed like a great idea, but I noticed in the reviews that either they didn’t perform as expected for the infant stage or that the top weight allowance was misleading because the seat was shaped more for the smaller child– meaning parents had to buy another seat before they thought they would need to anyway.

So I was torn: Do I try the infant carrier, and hope to make it through to the 1 year mark before needing a new seat (so I could go on to a forward facing seat, even if it wasn’t as ideal as rear-facing) or do I skip the infant carrier and go straight to the longer lasting convertible, with its potential problems for infants and more difficult installation (since it can install backwards and forwards it’s bound to be more complicated)?  I also realized that with the smaller back seats most SUVs seem to have compared with cars, I was a little worried about fitting the convertible seat, but I still didn’t like the idea of the infant carrier that would only last for part of the first year.

The infant carriers generally get excellent reviews.  I almost went with the Graco SnugRide, especially since it was a Consumer Reports best buy (and it didn’t hurt that I found an adorable print).  Still I was stopped by the 22 lb limit.

I originally had dismissed the SafeSeat (Step 1) because the reviews were often mixed, many people noting how heavy it was compared to their SnugRide carrier.  I realized something when reading many of the reviews, however: People aren’t really complaining about the weight of the seat, but the weight of the seat and their child.  The part of the seat that you carry, at least according to this site, is under 10 lbs.  It’s only 2 lbs heavier than the SnugRide carrier.  Since I mostly plan to use slings and harnesses to carry the child once she can hold her head up, I’m not sure it’s going to be that big a deal to me by the time the weight of the child makes carrying the whole thing strenuous — and I’ll get the benefits of the infant carrier in the earlier months (it’ll be nice to have a safe little seat for her to chill in, if necessary, when I take her places).  And if I decide I want to, I can still use it to snap into strollers and swings and whatnot like the SnugRide can.

The SafeSeat is a little bigger than the SnugRide, which some people don’t like, though it still seemed more compactly constructed than the convertibles.  But it seems to be more comfortable for the child than both of the other options (At least the SafeSeats with the cotton covers seem to be cozy for the child — I read that the metallic sheened covers were hot and uncomfortable, which is too bad since I think the metallic threaded prints might be the cheapest ones to get.  I’m not sure if the Quinn print is “cotton” per se but it’s not metallic at all — hopefully it will be good…) and the seat has high crash test ratings (including side impact protection — though it still has the “rebound” problem of many infant carriers) and it will last up to 30 lbs (its weight and height allowances mean it fits 97% of 1 year olds.).  It has front adjustments for the five-point harness, which will be good to have with a child in the seat.   It also seems to score well with Consumer Reports.

So I got a Graco SafeSeat.  I may still need to get a convertible seat, but the chances are greatly reduced by spending a little extra on the SafeSeat over the SnugRide.  I got mine on sale with free shipping at EliteCarSeats.com, and I have nothing but good things to report about the buying experience — I received it two days after I ordered it (and I’ll also get money back from them through Upromise).  There are also several styles of the SafeSeat for sale on Amazon, but be careful about which print you get as the cotton-y ones seem to be the most comfortable and the metallic ones get parent complaints for being hot and sweat-inducing.  (I went to the Graco site to see the various SafeSeat prints available, which also shows where you can buy the seat in that print, to help me decide, but you still pretty much have to guess as to whether the print is metallic or not if you’re only shopping online.  It looks like we got one of the last “Quinn” prints available, since it’s not even listed on the Graco site anymore.  I think our car seat looks quite Gaelic, haha.)  We’ll see if I still like my car seat decision once I can actually put a child in it!